Nikon Z8 with Nikkor Z 85mm f/1.8 S at 1/20 sec, f/1.8, ISO 500.
We’re going to open our series on Japan with images of the Tokyo Skytree, the tallest freestanding tower in the world at 2,080′ (634m). It stood only 1 km away from my hotel in Asakusa, so I had ample opportunities to photograph it over my eight days in Tokyo. The image above obviously exploited a misty night to provide some atmosphere. Photographing something so freakishly tall presents unique challenges, especially when it is so much taller than everything else. Some nice clouds do help, but here I also used the curving lines of the bridge and the shoreline to make an interesting, dynamic shape out of the reflecting water:
Nikon Z8 with Nikkor Z 24-120mm f/4 S at 57mm, 1/350 sec, f/8.0, ISO 350.
Returning to that misty night, one advantage of something being so tall is that it is often visible over or between other buildings, which provides opportunities to juxtapose it with countless other—much more pedestrian—structures, as in this somewhat dystopian-feeling image:
Nikon Z8 with Nikkor Z 85mm f/1.8 S at 1/8 sec, f/1.8, ISO 500.
I should mention that the lighting on the Skytree is dynamic and changes colors, too, so that in a short period of time you can have many variations of the same basic image.
In the next image, the building on the left (the Sumida City Office building) is a respectable 19-story (84 meter tall) structure that is only about one-eighth as tall as the Skytree. There are a lot of funny perspectives going on here:
Nikon Z8 with Nikkor Z 24-120mm f/4 S at 57mm, 1/2000 sec, f/9.5, ISO 500.
24mm was barely enough to play with this flower-filled planter as a contrasting foreground element; it would have been better to have had my 14-24 with me on this walk:
Nikon Z8 with Nikkor Z 24-120mm f/4 S at 24mm, 1/125 sec, f/9.5, ISO 500.
I normally edit out stray power lines, but there is nothing stray about these, so I embraced them:
Nikon Z8 with Nikkor Z 24-120mm f/4 S at 86mm, 1/3000 sec, f/4.0, ISO 500.
In the previous image, it was important to keep the wires from crossing the tip of the tower as well as the fatter portion down low.
Finally, we conclude our Skytree Study with a bank shot off the side of the Asahi Beer Tower, which tends to have wonderful reflections and will also feature in future posts:
Nikon Z8 with Nikkor Z 24-120mm f/4 S at 86mm, 1/500 sec, f/9.5, ISO 500.
I hope you enjoyed this first installment of images from Japan. Many more to come!
And Happy New Year! There are plenty of adventures on the docket for 2026 after we finish this recap of last fall’s visit to Japan. I hope you will enjoy them.
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